Just Once More
by LEPrecon
Summary: She thought that when he left, it would be for good. He thought that when he left, she wouldn't be there anymore. They guessed they where both wrong. Bruce/Betty Steve/Peggy slash
1. Prolouge

_Hi everyone who's reading this story! This is my first Fic (that I've actually been able to pulish). My macbook doesn't have word, so I got a PC instead._

_Great. I'd love it if you'd continue reading, thanks! Just if you're confused, this is only a prolouge, that shows an important event in the future chapters. Yes, it is pretty short, but I promise that the chapters after this one will be longer….at least a thousand words. Except maybe for the epiloge. Not so sure about that. But, yeah, without further ado, MY FIRST FIC!_

_Disclamer: I don't own Marvel, or any of these characters (wish I did though). If I did, then the Avengers Blu-Ray pack would be out by now, haha. This entire story is completely Marvel , and maybe a few original people._

* * *

"What did you do to them?" Tony hissed at the screen, clenching his hands into a fist, as if wanting to punch Loki. But then again, there was nothing he could do, as the demigod was on a projected screen. The figure laughed, gesturing with his hands, arms spread out wide, and his teeth, an unearthly white glow, began to move.

"Do you **really** want to know?" he asked, hand flipping switches on a dashboard. Lights flickered on behind him, three figures sitting, no strapped, to chairs, came into view. A man stepped into view, his eyes a glowing eerie blue. A strangled murmur was released by one of the Avengers.

"No, this can't be real. I watched him die. I watched him _die_."

The strange man shouldered a rifle, and strapped two guns to his hip. Loki conversed in stage whispers, still not a single fact betrayed the pair. The man then held up a knife, dripping in blood, thick and red, and dropped it. It clattered to the floor with a clang, and lay there, blade still vibrating, spreading the substance all over the cement. Loki beckoned the man to move forward, and he took the camera into his hands. The footage was shaky to say at the least, but finally righted itself. The lense zoomed in on one of the people and Betty's face drained of all color. His eyes were flashing an electric green, mouth slightly agape, blood dribbling down to his chin. Pupils dilated way beyond what was normal, even she knew that. Tony had already made the conformation, and voiced it to Betty, and Loki repeated it out loud.

"He'll never speak again." A cackling laughter rose from his chest, and the screen turned black.


	2. Chapter 1

_I'm back again! I'm sorry about the horrible grammar in the first chapter, I was still scrambling to finish my homework, so I hope this chapter is better...it doesn't say the word count, but I had to break it off somewhere, or this chapter would have been loooooong. Hehe. Anyway, I gave you a bunch of hints in this chapter, even the beginning of a sentence. So, I hope you enjoy this one. Ah, I edited it over and over, but I'm not all that happy how it turned out... :(_

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Natasha ran across the paved street, hair loose, tumbling about her shoulders. She could hear that man chasing her, the rifle shooting bullets down alleyways. She came to a stop at the intersection of an extremely busy street; cars honked, people shouted, others cursed, but no one seemed to notice that she was being chased by a guy with a gun. She cursed under her breath when the pedestrian sign turned to a red hand. Nevertheless, she vaulted over cars, still looking behind her for the nameless chaser. Three bullets were fired and one found its mark, barely. It clipped her in the shoulder, but it only managed to rip off the S.H.I.E.L.D. badge, sending the cloth insignia flying above her head. The man reloaded a clip, and she turned; the barrel of the rifle was now glowing blue, the same color as the Tesseract.

Natasha needed to find somewhere safe to be, somehow away from the Cube's power. An empty alleyway tempted her; it was shadowed by the skyscrapers that ran on either sides. The agent made a sharp turn and skidded down the tar driveway, barley managing to swivel in the tucked-away corner.

She sat down hard, grasping desperately at the shadows to hide her, and she pulled out a pair of extra units, ones that Loki had forgotten to take from her. Footsteps resounded loudly on the sidewalk, and she turned to find her chaser walking right by her hiding spot, perfect. She waited for a moment, trying to catch her breath and clear her mind.

She padded quietly down near the opening of the alley and began to run; the chase was on, again. Natasha tapped her comms unit, its line still dead, but as soon as she swerved out of sight, it crackled with interference.

"Agent Romanoff to Base, do you copy?"

Deafening silence permeated the thick foggy air. Thirty seconds, one minute, minute and a half...nothing.

"Agent Romanoff this is Director Fury. What's your twenty?"

"I'm on a street with two bridal shops, and a grocery market. I've got an armed tail following me. He's got something that resembles Phase Two Tesseract power; it could potentially slaughter hundreds in a second if he decides to fire that gun. "

"We've got a quintjet ready and equipped, I need you to get in and get out. Do I make myself clear Agent Romanoff? And that's an order."

"Crystal, sir."

Natasha cringed; she was actually starting to sound like Hill.

"Sir, but I have coordinates to where Loki's keeping all his weaponry."

"Get into that jet and we'll lift you out, Coulson's got a lock on your location, stay in contact with us. Keep innocents out of harm's way, no undesirable deaths on our ledgers, got it?"

"Roger that."

The airwaves then fell silent, except for the occasional crackle of electricity. Fog swirled in heavy shrouds, giving Natasha or her attacker the upper hand. She wandered through the streets looking for a giant gray metal high tech machine hovering about ten feet high, not that hard right? Wrong.

Natasha rounded a corner and was vaguely aware of people screaming. As crowds fled by the number, a ticking brought her attention to the street. A blue glow. The Tesseracts power. The mysterious man's weapon, set to explode.

A heavy humming sounded above her and to her relief she saw Coulson's black suit through the glass window. Natasha gestured to her 'predicament'. Phil gave her a smile and tossed her a shining black case. It clattered to the ground with a loud bang. Natasha thanked him and picked it up gingerly. The paint was bright white and was painted the words 'Phase II'.

Damn that Coulson.

Natasha squinted up at the quinjet while Phil gave her a thumbs up and a radiating smile. She huffed, unpleased with her position. The assassin gauged the crowd, and she ran out onto the road, jumping off three cars; scaring quite a few people nearby.

Then she spotted the blue glow. And it was, moving? The weapon was tossed high in the air after being hit by a car, and landed on the floor of a balcony. She cursed for what seemed like the hundredth time in under twenty-four hours. The black barrel was dented inward, but still fired blue shots, causing pandemonium as rumble crashed to the streets and window glass shattered spraying people below.

Crap.

This wasn't good; Fury specifically stated that she wasn't supposed to harm any civilians when she retrieved the weapons. A man half clothed ran out of the room, and spotted the weapon; a look of surprise crossed his face and he went to pick it up. He clicked a few buttons and the barrel slid off the body of the gun. The man inspected it carefully, turning it over and touching the inner workings of the weapon.

"Drop it." Natasha said; her gaze steady and unwavering from the gray-blue irises. He smirked, his hands let it fall, and the assassin watched warily, wondering if he would simply pick it up and start shooting at her. But no, the stranger seemed to be subdued enough. When she was sure that he wasn't going to purposely harm her, a thought crossed her mind.

Her guns.

Natasha was a great hand to hand fighter, and a close combat technician, but without her guns as backup was the last straw. So she waited.

She looked up at him whose back was faced towards her when she heard the soft mumbles of a conversation. The assassin lifted an eyebrow and tapped her foot on the cement. There was no way that she was charging into that haze without anything except for a box and not even a tranquilizer if things got messy. Phil turned back around, grinning and holding her signature goodies. It was like heaven to touch her things again. Natasha had a refill for her Widows' Bite, four of her handguns, fifteen different daggers, and three smokescreens; not to mention a taser. She hadn't had a one in her hands for over three years; this was going to be fun.

Still, she got just a little more than she bargained for; Steve Rogers jumped out the open quintjet door, in full armor, or spandex. The super soldier asked for his shield, and Phil nearly wilted out the window when he was able to hold it. Natasha and Steve shared a look after he'd joined her, and when their eyes met, each one gauged another, still hesitant to work as a pair. Steve wasn't her usual partner, but he would do just fine. It wasn't that they were particularly close, to state it simply both of them were just teammates.

They shared another look after Natasha explained the situation in hushed tones with the super soldier. His eyebrows drew together when she mentioned the Tesseract, and when she pointed at the weapon on the balcony floor, he looked ready to explode; not all that great.

"How are we going to do this? I can't get to him without the guy shooting random strangers in the face, Fury even told me to keep them out of this mess."

The man just continued staring at them, as if even a plan couldn't deter his order to bring Natasha back, dead or alive, but Loki preferred alive. She could be used as bait, but she managed to escape. Steve studied the surrounds on both sides of him, and Natasha could even see the gears turning inside his head.

"We'll flank him from both sides, to his blind spots and take him by surprise," Steve said finally.

"Great, but he has 360 views of us from that vantage point," she whispered back.

"We'll go by the rooftops, get around behind him, and hide behind the chimney workings."

"Sure, but how do we get up there? It's not like we can fly right up behind him, he'll notice us."

"Not if we-," Steve was cut off when the stranger smiled menacingly at them and...peeled off his face? She started, lunging for a quick break, when a gentle hand touched her shoulder. She looked up into the blue eyes of Captain America. Right, she wasn't being chased anymore.

He looked familiar, what was it about him? The jaw line, the brown hair, or the eyes? She'd seen this man before, and for sure, before she was captured. During her chase, she had never gotten to study his features properly, but Natasha was a hundred percent sure that she'd seen him in pictures, or...or. It seemed that her suspicions were correct when Steve dropped his shield suddenly, his eyes wide with recognition. He held up his hand, as if he signaled 'peace'.

"Buc-" the man fired the weapon.

* * *

_See, it took me so long to write this, and I don't even like it, great. So, I hope you enjoy my first official chapter! So feel free to drop a review in that little box down below, and make me happy! :) I PROMISE that I'll try to update everyday so the cliffs don't bother you...I gave you seriously the first three letters of a name, so you should recognize it. And the features, along with the description, and I swear by the trees in my backyard that he is a real Marvel character. Just saying, the action will start to kick off in the next few chapters. I know that this story is rated T, but I didn't want to put in the colorful language that revolves around Stark in my later chapters, so there won't be the likelihood of 'hardcore' profanity, just saying. _

_Bye!_


	3. Chapter 2

_Hi! I'm back again...yes, last time I had some hiccups with my computer, and I accidentally rewrote the first chapter with the prologue several times, so now I've cleared that up. Thank you to __**saichick-Anna-Eriskigal **__for reviewing to my story! For those of you who don't know, she's the author of the fanfic 'Man Out of Time' in the Avengers archive. YOU HAVE TO CHECK IT OUT! It's a whooping fifty-five (six, by the time I publish this) long story, and I love it, and you will to. :)_

Fury slammed his hands down on the table, sending papers flying everywhere, and leaving an extremely startled team of new recruits. The single exposed eye was radiated pure loathing. He pressed his hand to his comms unit and growled into the microphone.

"You said what Hill?"

A slight pause.

"He damn fell off the side of a mountain, I don't think he'd have survived; plus seventy years, he'd be good as dead." His hand fisted, knuckles turning white and face contorted into an expression of exaggerated aggravation. His eyebrows furrowed, and he pursed his lips. A vein popped near his temple, and it pulsed with every beat of his heart.

"He's what with Rogers?" His eye narrowed even more, and his face was flushed with anger. "Get him into the hellicarier, _both_ of them."

Fury hissed through his teeth, his hand bunching up stray papers and crushing them with his grip. His eye patch had shifted ever so slightly, revealing the blackness of an empty socket. He had turned around and barked orders at some passing agents, forcing them to make a turn and double back from where they came.

This wasn't good at all.

* * *

Steve was buried deep in the ice, his shield covering his face in a vain attempt to prevent his skull from getting a bashing. The air was a sickening cold, and he remembered the way he'd felt so tired, bone deep, and the ice calling to him. A chance that he could actually escape reality, but the rational side of his brain would tell him that he owed Peggy that dance. He wondered how she was handling all of that stress, and his mind wandered to where he was at. Of course, he meant the time; it felt like eternity in this prison, the snow so blinding and thick that he couldn't see. He thanked Howard for his most resilient suit yet, protecting him from the cold, but here at this late date, most of his body heat was seeping through to the ice.

He was tired. So, so tired. Even though his eyelids where shut, he breathed as deeply as he could and succumbed to the frost.

He remembered the voices, floating in and out of his vision, but his eyes wouldn't open. A hand brushed his shield, sending small vibrations through his body. A strong male voice spoke, something about 'waited long enough'. Was he really that far from his time? He'd only been here for the most of a week; it was probably his team here to rescue him. Those words still nagged at his mind, 'long enough...long enough...long enough'. He was late for his dance with Peggy. Oh, she was so going to kill him. He heard the scraping of a shovel, the sounds of people hustling around and the mechanical whirring of machines.

The way nurses and doctors rotated in and out of his room, the scanning of x-rays, the beeping of vital machines. He wanted to see Peggy, his Peggy. One day he heard her distinct accent, and the click-clack of her heels. He felt her hand in his, warm against his ice cold one. Steve heard her crying softly, tears splattered onto his chest, the scent of her hair, still the strong smell of army bases and secret services. He wanted more than anything to comfort her, try to get a kiss and get slapped on the cheek instead. See the fire burning in her eyes and the wolfish smile on her face. Peggy. _Peggy Carter. _He could imagine her wavy brown hair, the glare in her eyes when he was caught kissing that blonde girl back in the army base.

The sight of the old gym, something just about as old has him, was comforting. He wasn't the only thing that survived his time, this place; this _haven_ was where he belonged. Nobody was here anyway, and the price was down to about two thousand, so he just bought it. He moved in upstairs, breathing in the musty scent of sweat, the fresh night air circling through the window up in what he called the bedroom. He found a bunch of old sand punching bags in a back locker, and the date told him it was made back to around nineteen fifty-three. On certain sleepless nights, he would punch the daylights out of that thing, thinking all about Schmitt. His face, the plane, the ice, the way Peggy visited him when he was supposedly dead. She was probably dead now. Dead. Another bag exploded. Sand spread across the floor.

* * *

Steve Rogers opened his eyes, finding himself on a cot, staring at a pure white ceiling. A beeping noise caught his attention, and he turned his head to face a wall filled completely with high-tech machines. Too fancy for his taste. He itched to get off the bed and out of the room, but he found himself _restrained_ to the bed. A metal band was laid across his torso and bolted securely to the bed, then after that, the floor. The door opened, and Bruce walked in. He looked utterly sorry for the super soldier, knowing the feeling of being trapped, and unable to do anything about the predicament.

"How'd I get here?" he managed out before the doctor pulled out a notepad and scribbled something down and set it in front of Steve. A look dawned on his face, and he turned to speak again. Bruce held up his hand, and shook his head with a smile on his face.

'Don't, I've gotten enough pestering from Tony.' he wrote down. He spent a while with Bruce, asking him questions, and then slowly sliding into more complex questions after the base was settled securely around him. He still couldn't believe what he was reading.

He was been shot down by Bucky, who had escaped, but not before Natasha had pinned a tracking device on his collar, so his friend was being interrogated by Fury down in Holding Cell A. Then Coulson had lowered the quintjet and the assassin had dragged Steve on board, where a single doctor and two nurses had helped his minor injuries, but a real medical team had been assembled to treat him later that day. After that Stark and Natasha had been shipped out to save Bruce and Clint; the mission was highly successful. His medical operation had been slightly on the crazy side and thrashed around after surgery, until Banner had insisted on injecting him with a strong shot of morphine cocktails. It wouldn't really help him get sedated, but it had at least calmed Steve's nerves enough. He'd calmed down after that, but Fury made a compromise with the doctor and ordered him to at least be restrained lest he went a little 'I'm going to find out exactly where I am and break out of my hospital room' frenzy after he woke.

And one fact that he still couldn't believe. To save Bucky's life, Banner had paid a dramatic price. Loki had cut his tongue clean off.

After an hour or so, he was diagnosed 'being in sound mind' from a different doctor than Banner; which was completely obvious, if his friend had been evaluating him, then Steve would have been long gone.

He'd been issued a set of street clothes to wear and he had three hours of leisure time on his hands, so he decided to explore the entire Helicarrier. It was probably impossible, but it was a start. He wandered the hallways until he reached the quite obscure lab, finding it quiet though the two genii where there. Then he remembered. There would be quirky comments from Stark, but no quiet chuckle or response from Banner. He pulled up a chair after Stark had offered him a generous amount of frozen strawberries, but declined. Steve watched the pair work, a little dance had sprouted between them, the way that Tony handed Bruce the microscope when he past, and Banner passing the designs to the billionaire's computer screen. Well, a very science-y, quiet, and orderly dance; not to mention that there was not music. The super soldier almost considered leaving, and had pushed back his stool when his attention was diverted.

A woman knocked on the glass doors, and Stark looked up; a boyish grin crossed his face. He turned to talk to Bruce.

"She's heeeeeeeere!" he skipped over to the door and allowed them in. A woman with light brown hair, pulled up into a high ponytail, with beautiful forest green eyes, rimmed with hazel, entered. She was dressed in a sharp looking suit, with a tight black skirt that reached modestly down to below her knees. She made a lasting impression in Steve's memory; women these days wore the weirdest things, a shirt so low he was uncomfortable, and dresses so short; it exposed three quarters of a woman's legs. Bruce looked up, and inhaled sharply. His expression looked something like remorse, or even more so, guilt.

What was the doctor worried about? The woman seemed nice enough, with a kind heart shaped face, and full lips, along with a matching demeanor. The silence was defeaning, not to mention strained...and awkward.

"Does anyone want to tell me what's _going on _here?" Tony nudged Bruce, who raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

He scribbled a single word on his pad of lined paper. It was hasty and extremely rushed, but it held only two words.

Betty Ross

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_So yeah, that's pretty much it. I had to delete it a few times, and I am a perfectionist, so no version of this chapter was good enough for my Asian taste. Haha. So please review and make my day! It took me a really long time to fill out the parts that seemed a little fast for me, and I'm past my respective bedtime (more or less) but yeah. Hope you enjoy…thank you again for reading my story! :) More excitement will carry on. The interesting things will fill themselves in. My style if future, present, past, and all mixed up….so sorry if it's a little confusing. See you next chapter!_


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